Technology

Disclosure: Most of the vendors mentioned are clients of the author.

This last week was surprisingly busy, given that most of us are locked in our homes, trying to recall what normal is like. Microsoft announced significant changes with its Chromium Edge browser that significantly addressed the problems we focused on before the pandemic, and both Intel and AMD drove laptop refreshes.

Still, those designs originated from conditions that existed before the Pandemic, not the world that now exists.

So lettalk about where I think the next security focus for browsers will be and what laptops post COVID-19 may begin to look like this week.

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Zoom has decided to cease development of new product features so it can focus on fixing various privacy and security issues.

The company has seen a surge in the use of its platform in recent weeks, as self isolation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic ramps up the demand for video software. As its popularity has boomed — both for business and personal use — and the companystock price rocketed, underlying vulnerabilities in the platform have become apparent.

&Zoom-bombing,& where intruders have been able to access video meetings that were not password protected, has led to serious privacy concerns, with uninvited attendees harassing online A.A. meetings and church meetings, for example. The FBIthis week warned of unauthorized access to virtual classrooms and recommended that users change security settings to protect meetings.

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Google, Microsoft and Mozilla have each issued reprieves to Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1, aged encryption protocols that were to be bounced from browser support in March, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By common agreement, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge, and Mozilla's Firefox were to disable support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 early in 2020. They, along with Apple - which produces Safari - announced the move a year and a half ago, noting then that the protocols had been made obsolete by TLS 1.2 and 1.3.

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Business communication apps saw record levels of growth in March, according to statistics from mobile market data provider App Annie.

With a growing portion of the global population now living under some kind of government lockdown, many organizations have had to shift business processes & and their employees are having to embrace a work-from-home culture on a scale never before attempted.

Not surprisingly, the demand for video conferencing apps has surged in recent weeks, with enterprise-focused mobile app downloads reaching 62 million during the week March 14-21 & the highest number ever seen.

According to a report by App Annie, that figure was up 45% from the week before and up 90% from the pre-Covid-19 weekly download average. Business application downloads represent the highest growth in any category in both the iOS and Google Play stores.

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